Editor’s Note: Our society needs to get its soul back

To what levels of desensitization can a civilized society plunge?

That is the question considering the alarming disinterest, or deliberate avoidance, of ongoing atrocities committed in our midst.

Imagine the media frenzy and public outcry in America, Australia or Europe, for example, if babies and toddlers are raped and killed, or school children hacked to pieces for some voodoo rituals (in South Africa’s case, for muti purposes).

It would be lead stories in every newspaper and on every television and radio station, followed up with in-depth debates with political leaders, senior police officers, psychologists and other appropriate parties.

Not so in SA – and Zululand for that matter.

If one pages through the past few months’ Zululand Observer editions, one will encounter several articles pertaining to such acts of barbarism as described above.

The worrying factor is that nobody seems to really care. There are no public letters to the newspaper, urgent meetings called by municipal or traditional leaders, the police, churches or community organisations to seriously investigate and/or address the phenomenon of a sick society.

No regional or national media pick up on these stories, probably because they have so many of their own atrocities elsewhere in the country.

Perpetrators get caught, appear in court and are sentenced, with hardly a blimp on the public’ Richter scale.

The public rather spend their energy complaining about potholes in roads and power load shedding and community leaders are far too busy feathering their own nests to attend to pressing social issues.

One of the explanations for public apathy is that people have reached a saturation point and deliberately shut out the evil we do to each other to protect their sanity.

But opting for an ostrich head-in-sand mentality, while our children and women (yes, and some men, too) continue to be violated at will, can only serve to infest our society with more uncontrolled savagery.

Now is the time to take a stand and get our collective soul back.